Agile / Scrum Transformation

The Agile Software Development Methodology is more than just a buzzword. Since its inception
more than 10 years ago, it has helped many software development teams and organizations
streamline the development process and get their functionality to their customers faster. There
is no single way of implementing Agile into an organization, and for that reason it can be
challenging to adopt.

What is Agile / Scrum?

The focus of Agile is working software, continuous testing, frequent customer interaction, and
embraces changing requirements. At every step of the development process, the customer is shown
what has been produced, and has the opportunity to request changes. As a result, the end product
is higher in quality, and is exactly what the customer wants.
Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development framework for managing software
development. (https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)).

What will it do for me?

Transforming to an Agile / Scrum methodology leads to an organization that not only has a
stronger focus on software quality and timely, feature-rich releases, but also has the ability
to quickly adapt to customers’ ever changing requirements. Ultimately, this means faster time to
market, fewer defects, and happier customers.

Reduced Time-to-Market

Research suggests about 80% of all market leaders were first to market. As well as the
higher revenue from incremental delivery, agile development philosophy also supports the
notion of early and regular releases, and ‘perpetual beta’.

Improved Quality

A key principle of agile development is that testing is integrated throughout the
lifecycle, enabling regular inspection of the working product as it develops. This
allows the product owner to make adjustments if necessary and gives the product team
early sight of any quality issues.

Increased Visibility

Agile development principles encourage active ‘user’ involvement throughout the
product’s development and a very cooperative collaborative approach. This provides
excellent visibility for key stakeholders, both of the project’s progress and of the
product itself, which in turn helps to ensure that expectations are effectively managed.

Risk Management

Small incremental releases made visible to the product owner and product team through
its development help to identify any issues early and make it easier to respond to
change. The clear visibility in agile development helps to ensure that any necessary
decisions can be taken at the earliest possible opportunity, while there’s still time to
make a material difference to the outcome.

Cost Control

The above approach of fixed timescales and evolving requirements enables a fixed budget.
The scope of the product and its features are variable, rather than the cost.

More Enjoyable!

The active involvement, cooperation and collaboration make agile development teams a
much more enjoyable place for most people. Instead of big specs, we discuss requirements
in workshops. Instead of lengthy status reports, we collaborate around a task-board
discussing progress. Instead of long project plans and change management committees, we
discuss what’s right for the product and project and the team is empowered to make
decisions. In my experience this makes it a much more rewarding approach for everyone.
In turn this helps to create highly motivated, high performance teams that are highly
cooperative.

Increased Revenue

The iterative nature of agile development means features are delivered incrementally,
enabling some benefits to be realised early as the product continues to develop.

Flexibility / Agility

In traditional development projects, we write a big spec up-front and then tell business
owners how expensive it is to change anything, particularly as the project goes on. In
fear of scope creep and a never-ending project, we resist changes and put people through
a change control committee to keep them to the essential minimum. Agile development
principles are different. In agile development, change is accepted. In fact, it’s
expected. Because the one thing that’s certain in life is change. Instead the timescale
is fixed and requirements emerge and evolve as the product is developed. Of course for
this to work, it’s imperative to have an actively involved stakeholder who understands
this concept and makes the necessary trade-off decisions, trading existing scope for
new.

Business Engagement/Customer Satisfaction

The active involvement of a user representative and/or product owner, the high
visibility of the product and progress, and the flexibility to change when change is
needed, create much better business engagement and customer satisfaction. This is an
important benefit that can create much more positive and enduring working relationships.

Right Product

Above all other points, the ability for agile development requirements to emerge and
evolve, and the ability to embrace change (with the appropriate trade-offs), the team
build the right product. It’s all too common in more traditional projects to deliver a
“successful” project in IT terms and find that the product is not what was expected,
needed or hoped for. In agile development, the emphasis is absolutely on building the
right product.

How?

Changing the culture of an organization is done using the Agile methodology itself: planned,
managed, continuous changes made with the end goal in mind. Our experienced professionals
will
work with your Leadership and Development teams hand-in-hand to educate, plan, implement,
and
guide you
through this exciting time. We work with the leadership team to:

Develop a clear
understanding of the current development practices to see what is working well,
and where improvements can be made.